KALAMAZOO, MI -- Exactly four months ago to the day after issuing its first press release about a missing-person investigation for Dr. Teleka Patrick, the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office declared the case closed Wednesday, with the discovery of Patrick's body in northern Indiana.

It now appears the 30-year-old Kalamazoo medical resident accidentally drowned in a pond a few hundred feet from where her car was found abandoned, Sheriff Richard Fuller said at a Wednesday morning press conference.

It is a tragic end to an investigation that has drawn international attention.

A first-year resident in psychiatry at Western Michigan University School of Medicine, Patrick was brilliant, beautiful and highly accomplished.

It also became evident she may have had an undiagnosed mental illness that she largely kept hidden from friends and family.

Graduating last spring with both a medical degree and a doctorate in chemistry from Loma Linda University in California, Patrick had her pick of medical residencies. In Twitter posts written under pseudonyms, Patrick said she was told by God to pick WMU to be near Marvin Sapp, a Grand Rapids minister and gospel singer she knew only as a fan.

Patrick thought she was meant to marry Sapp, but police say Sapp never responded to Patrick's attempts to initiate a relationship. In September, Sapp obtained a personal protection order against Patrick, accusing her of stalking.

In the weeks before her disappearance, Patrick was increasingly despondent about her decision to move to Kalamazoo, according to her social media posts.

On Dec. 5, Patrick worked a shift at Borgess Medical Center. She was last seen leaving the parking lot at 8 p.m.

Her car was found two hours later in a ditch alongside westbound I-94 near Porter, Ind., about 110 miles from Kalamazoo. Her wallet was inside, but Patrick had disappeared.

Wednesday's press conference cleared up some of the mysteries in the case, but left other questions still unanswered.

6 things we now know

1. Patrick was acting "strange" and "erratic" the night she disappeared.

"I can't take much more of this," she wrote, and within hours deleted all her social media accounts.

Patrick seemed fine during her work shift at Borgess on Dec. 5, Fuller said Wednesday.

But after work, she left her cellphone and all other property owned by WMU and Borgess in her locker. She asked a co-worker to drive her downtown, although her car was in the Borgess parking lot. She also told the co-worker that she had lost her wallet, and he loaned her $100 cash.

During the ride downtown, the co-worker later told police, Patrick was acting "strange" and "erratic." At Patrick's request, the co-worker dropped her off at the Radisson Plaza Hotel, and a clerk at the front desk also found her behavior "strange," Fuller said, "to the point where he asked her, 'Are you OK?' "

Patrick seemed unclear about why she was at the hotel or what she wanted, and she had left her wallet back at Borgess, the clerk told police later. After a convoluted conversation with the clerk, she asked for a ride back to Borgess, ostensibly to get her wallet and return to the hotel to book a room.

A Radisson shuttle driver took her to Borgess, but once there, Patrick told him: "I'm sorry, I can't go back with you."

The driver, the last known person to talk to Patrick, saw her get in her car and drive away, Fuller said.

2. Patrick likely was headed to St. Louis when she got on westbound I-94.

Nobody knows exactly where Patrick was headed on the night of Dec. 5 or why she was so far from Kalamazoo when she was scheduled to work at Borgess the next morning.

In January, Fuller suggested Patrick likely was headed to Chicago to see a relative. On Wednesday, he said police thought "her true destination was St. Louis to see an old acquaintance."

That wasn't revealed before now, Fuller said, because if Patrick had gone voluntarily missing to start a new life, "she needed a place to surface" and publicizing the most likely place "would have shut the only door open to her."

Davis told the Kalamazoo Gazette in February that he talked to Patrick on Dec. 4 and Patrick begged him to come to Kalamazoo as soon as possible to see her because she was feeling scared and distraught.

3. She likely pulled off I-94 because of a flat tire.

The week she disappeared, Patrick has some repair work done on her 1997 Lexus. Mechanics warned her that her tires were in bad shape and needed to be replaced.

On Dec. 5 just before Patrick went off the road, other motorists called 911 to report a car was driving erratically, slowing down and speeding up. It appears they were talking about Patrick, Fuller said.

When the car was found, the front left tire was flat.

4. Patrick appeared to have drowned shortly after she ditched her car.

Alerted by 911 calls that Patrick had driven off the highway, Indiana State Police and a rescue unit were at the scene within 10 minutes. They found the car, but there was no sign of Patrick.

The body was found several hundred feet away in the southeast corner of the pond, the section of the water closest to where Patrick's car was abandoned.

In a clothes pocket on the body, officials found Patrick's car keys, her beeper from the Western Michigan School of Medicine and $100 in cash.

The cause of death appears to be drowning, Fuller said, although the coroner is still awaiting toxicology reports, which will take several weeks. The body was decomposed, but identification was made using fingerprints.

5. Evidence indicates Patrick left Kalamazoo voluntarily and nobody else was involved in her death.

Jim Carlin, a private investigator hired by the Patrick family, has said he thinks police have not done enough to investigate Sapp.

However, Fuller reiterated on Wednesday that Sapp has "cooperated fully" with the investigation and "he is nothing more than the innocent victim of a stalking."

Fuller said there is "zero" evidence to indicate anyone else was involved in Patrick's death.

The evidence indicates that Patrick was alone when she left, and her departure was voluntary, Fuller said. The autopsy did not indicate any sign of trauma to the body or foul play.

"There is no indication this is anything other than an accidental drowning," Fuller said Wednesday.

6. Weather delayed the discovery of Patrick's body, as did initial misinformation about her vehicle.

It took five days for Indiana and Kalamazoo authorities to make the connection between an abandoned care in Porter, Ind., and a missing doctor from Kalamazoo.

The reason: Deputies were initially told Patrick's Lexus was in the repair shop on Dec. 5 and she was driving a rental vehicle. It wasn't until Dec. 10 they learned she was driving the Lexus, and realized that car had been impounded in Indiana.

During those five days, the weather had taken an abrupt turn.

There was no snow on the ground or ice on Lake Charles when Patrick disappeared.

But temperatures plunged the next day, Dec. 6, and stayed below freezing, quickly icing over the pond, which stayed frozen until the first week of April.

4 unanswered questions

1. What was Patrick's mental state the night of Dec. 5?

It now appears Patrick may have had longstanding mental-health issues dating back to her college years. It's also apparent she successfully kept those issues largely hidden from family and friends.

Indeed, most people knew Patrick as a brilliant, high-functioning professional. The same week she disappeared, she received a glowing mid-year evaluation about her psychiatric residency.

According to her ex-husband in California, Patrick was fearful a diagnosis of mental illness would undermine her career. He said she refused to seek treatment for symptoms that included hearing voices and paranoia.

"Teleka appeared to be troubled, but she managed to hide those troubles very convincingly," Fuller said Wednesday.

On the night she disappeared, officials have said, there's evidence she was in mental distress and that may have led to her decision to leave Kalamazoo on the night of Dec. 5.

But the fact is, said Detective Sgt. William Sparrow, the lead investigator in the case, "We don't know what she was thinking" and how that might have contributed to events that night.

On the Find Teleka Facebook page, family members posted Wednesday: "Teleka had a passion and zest for life and no matter the circumstances that led up to her death, we are certain that she would not have taken her own life.

2. Why did Patrick walk away from the highway after her car went off the road?

Before the body was found Sunday, the conventional wisdom among police officials was that Patrick likely walked toward the highway after ditching her car.

Exit 22 off I-94 is visible from where Patrick's car went off the road, and it also was plausible that Patrick hitched a ride along the heavily traveled highway.

By contrast, Lake Charles is separated from I-94 by a four-foot wire fence topped with barbed wire designed to keep wildlife from running onto the road.

Sparrow and Fuller said Wednesday it's not clear why Patrick headed toward the woods and how she got over or through the fence.

"There are all kinds of possibilities" on why she went away from the highway, Fuller said.

One possibility: She may have been drawn by the lights at two truck stops on a service road on the other side of the woods.

As for the fence: "I'm not doing to speculate on how she got through the fence, over the fence or around the fence," Fuller said.

3. Why did a bloodhound track Patrick's scent to the highway instead of the woods?

A bloodhound brought in Dec. 12 by the Indiana State Police tracked Patrick's scent from the location to the car to the highway's edge, and did that twice.

The dog's handler told the Kalamazoo Gazette in January that he had high confidence in the dog's ability.

It's not clear why the dog didn't track Patrick to the woods, Fuller said Wednesday.

4. How did Patrick end up in the pond?

It was a dark night, and the pond is surrounded by an earth berm and considerable brush, Fuller said.

It's possible that Patrick walked over the berm, not realizing what was on the other side, and then stumbled down the steep slope into the water, Fuller said.

"It's very rough terrain," he said.

However, while the pond has a maximum depth of 21 feet, it's not that sudden of a drop-off -- Patrick's body was found in 3 feet of water.

So it's unclear why Patrick didn't quickly pull herself out of the water.

Fuller did not know if Patrick could swim.

Fuller and Sparrow said some aspects of the case will remain unknown, but finding the body at least ends the mystery about Patrick's whereabouts.

"Hopefully this will offer some closure," Fuller said at the press conference. "Our hearts go out to the Patrick family."

Julie Mack covers K-12 education and writes a column for Kalamazoo Gazette. Email her at jmack1@mlive.com, call her at 269-350-0277 or follow her on Twitterat kzjuliemack.